“You can’t sometimes, not unless you know who they are. But he’s half
Raymond, all right.”
“But how can you tell?” I asked.
“I told you, Scout, you just hafta know who they are.”
“Well how do you know we ain’t Negroes?”
“Uncle Jack Finch says we really don’t know. He says as far as he can trace back
the Finches we ain’t, but for all he knows we mighta come straight out of Ethiopia
durin‘ the Old Testament.”
“Well if we came out durin‘ the Old Testament it’s too long ago to matter.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Jem, “but around here once you have a drop of
Negro blood, that makes you all black. Hey, look—”
Some invisible signal had made the lunchers on the square rise and scatter bits of
newspaper, cellophane, and wrapping paper. Children came to mothers, babies
were cradled on hips as men in sweat-stained hats collected their families and
herded them through the courthouse doors. In the far corner of the square the
Negroes and Mr. Dolphus Raymond stood up and dusted their breeches. There
were few women and children among them, which seemed to dispel the holiday
mood. They waited patiently at the doors behind the white families.
“Let’s go in,” said Dill.
“Naw, we better wait till they get in, Atticus might not like it if he sees us,” said
Jem.
The Maycomb County courthouse was faintly reminiscent of Arlington in one
respect: the concrete pillars supporting its south roof were too heavy for their light
burden. The pillars were all that remained standing when the original courthouse
burned in 1856. Another courthouse was built around them. It is better to say,
built in spite of them. But for the south porch, the Maycomb County courthouse
was early Victorian, presenting an unoffensive vista when seen from the north.
From the other side, however, Greek revival columns clashed with a big
nineteenth-century clock tower housing a rusty unreliable instrument, a view
indicating a people determined to preserve every physical scrap of the past.
To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundry sunless county